


At Midnight All the Agents

by Prochytes



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV), Watchmen (TV 2019)
Genre: Action/Adventure, Alternate Universe - Fusion, Crossover, F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-13
Updated: 2020-01-13
Packaged: 2021-02-27 05:13:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,996
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22241626
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Prochytes/pseuds/Prochytes
Summary: In a world beset by the fear of interdimensional assault, two FBI agents grapple with the case of a young activist, who knows more than they do.
Relationships: Phil Coulson/Melinda May
Comments: 10
Kudos: 18





	At Midnight All the Agents

**Author's Note:**

> Small spoilers for _Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D ._ to 2x17 “Melinda”; spoilers for the whole of the original _Watchmen_ comic and for the 2019 TV show to 1x09 “See How They Fly”. Dark themes and references to drug abuse.

The suspect was easy on the eye. It was good that she had that going for her; she was also crazy as all hell. Nuts and candy made a classic combination.

Still, May had to admit that she was smooth. 11/2 conspiracy theorists usually foundered on the squid-falls. That reality made them flustered and incoherent. But this one just lounged back with a knowing smile.

“Squids fall,” said May. “I’ve washed them out of my own hair. Rich folks snap them up as a delicacy for dinner. They call them _fruits du ciel_.”

The suspect shrugged. “Colour me shocked: conspicuous consumption is a thing.”

“It is.” May’s last encounter with the One Percent had ended viscerally. She pushed the memory away. “But there’s no hoax behind it. You think a fleet of stealth aircraft is up there dropping sea-food?”

“Of course not.” The smile had turned pitying. “It’s teleportation.”

“Obviously – teleportation.” May leaned forward. “News flash: nobody can teleport.”

“One blue dude can.”

“One blue dude _on Mars_ can. And he’s never struck me as an aficionado of the fish course.”

“Which is why someone reverse-engineered his shtick.”

May snorted. “Reverse-engineer the Manhattan Transfer? You’d have to be…”

“Smart. Maybe the smartest person who’s ever lived. And rich. But if you were the smartest person who ever lived, getting rich would be the easy part.”

May looked into the suspect’s large, candid eyes. “Bullshit.”

The suspect grimaced. “I never said this would be an easy sell.”

“You never said a bunch of things.” May rearranged the papers in front of her, more for show than for any practical end. The salient points of the arrest were in her head. “You ready to give us a name?”

“ _Fruit du ciel_ \- I like that.” The smile was back. “You can call me ‘Skye’.”

***

“‘Skye’?”

“With an ‘e’.”

“‘Skye’. With an ‘e’.” Coulson’s face wore the expression of martyred professionalism that meant May had almost certainly interrupted him reading catalogues for mint condition _Tales of the Black Freighter_ early issues under his desk. “Between you and me and these office walls, ‘“Skye”-with-an-“e”’ spells ‘trouble’.”

“Why? She’s a kook.”

“And yet the Bureau knows nothing about her. Do you know how often that happens? It never happens. For all intents and purposes, ‘“Skye”-with-an-“e”’ _could_ have fallen from the heavens like a squid. But that’s not what bugs me.” Coulson tapped his fingers on the desk. “What bugs me is that the top brass insisted you should be the one who talked to her.”

“Still no backchannel on why that was? They don’t call me away from my cubicle for interrogations.”

“I know. I’ve heard your mantra enough times.” Coulson counted points off on his fingers: “‘Don’t have the taste for it; don’t have the talent for it; everyone at the Bureau knows what happened last time.’ And yet you’ve been put in to bat again, all the same.”

“Is this a punishment detail? Did one of my forms give someone on the Hill a paper-cut?”

“Unlikely. My guess is it’s political, though God knows how. Guthrie has been snuffling around.”

“Haven’t seen him in a while. Is he still the same?”

“He is,” Coulson smiled blandly, “if by that you mean: ‘Is he still an asshole?’”

“A connected asshole.”

“Assholes have to be connected, or they’re just holes. But I take your point. Guthrie wouldn’t lower himself to legwork for just a conspiracy nut.”

“Maybe he wants to bring her in.”

“Poacher turned gamekeeper? That’s a familiar tune. Feels wrong for that, though. There are deeper waters, here.”

“What do you want me to do?”

“Stay afloat. Find out what this girl’s deal is with 11/2, since she wasn’t even a pair of hopeful gametes when it happened. I’ll go on beachcombing – see what flies up.”

“Understood.”

“Thank you.” Coulson looked back at his desk. “What’s she like, this ‘“Skye”-with-an-“e”’ ? I only saw her when we put her through processing.”

May thought for a moment. “Smart, but mistaken about how far smart will take her. Scared, I think, but burying it under sass. You’d like her. I don’t.”

Coulson nodded. “Enjoy your swim.”

***

Skye was not being detained and questioned at the usual site. Instead, she had been stashed at the old facility downtown, which was so dilapidated that the Bureau was about to repurpose it for warehouse space. A skeleton staff maintained it, now. Skye was its only current inmate.

The Bureau, as was the tenor of the times, had been cutting a fair few corners across the board in recent years. All the same, the circumstances of Skye’s detention had joined the other procedural irregularities enjoined on this investigation in Coulson’s bursting file about why the case was a lawsuit waiting to happen. When May arrived back outside the interrogation room, she saw that the interview light was already on.

The condemned shithole didn’t even have proper sound-proofing. May paused for a moment outside the door, and listened.

_… think you’ll stay pretty for long in prison? I have news for you, sweetcakes. Jailbird bitches get resentful. They’ll fuck you up so you won’t know your own face. If you want guys to go on holding down their dicks and not their dinners when they look at you, you’ll cooperate with this investigation…_

May opened the door. “Agent Guthrie. There’s been a development.”

Guthrie had run to flab, a little, since May last saw him. For the most part, though, he retained the build of the fullback he liked to remind people he had been in College. Sinew tensed across the big shoulders as he turned to look at May. “What?”

“We should discuss it. Outside.”

Guthrie frowned, but shoved himself to his feet. “Fine.” He looked back across the table. “We’re not done.”

“I should hope not.” Skye’s voice was steady. The whites of her eyes showed; one hand squeezed the other in her lap. “I paid for the full package. Still waiting on that complimentary bathrobe.”

Guthrie snorted, and all but pushed past May. She also withdrew, shutting the door behind her.

***

“Let’s talk again about your arrest,” May said, when she came back into the room, five minutes later.

“Fine by me. What was the ‘development’?”

“A DUI T-boned your van. The investigating officer noted the presence of suspicious electronic equipment in your possession.”

“See – I don’t think there was a ‘development’ at all. I think that was your excuse to get Agent Gross out of my sight, so you could rip him a new one for giving me the third degree without your say-so.”

“This equipment, in turn, linked you to a series of security breaches in government agencies, for which responsibility had been claimed by the network known as The Rising Tide.”

“Though that doesn’t explain why he was shouting at you about Ian Quinn.”

May was silent.

“You’re quiet, “ Skye continued, seemingly nothing daunted, “but Agent Gross has a stupidly loud voice. He should have started swinging further from the door. Ian Quinn’s old news – even his company’s a subsidiary of Trieu Industries, now. So why the fuss?”

“Odd, that a woman who hates old news is obsessed with an atrocity that happened before she was born.”

“That’s about legacy.” Skye bit her lip. She suddenly looked very young, and very tired. “You did me a solid, getting Agent Gross off my back, just now. Thank you. Of course, that may be a ‘good cop, bad cop’ play.”

“Not how I roll,” said May. It was almost true. “From now on, you’ll only be seeing me or Agent Coulson.”

“Was he the one who was trying so very, very hard not to check you out while you were processing me? Not that I blame him, considering your physique. You still work out as much as in the old days? I bet Coulson was a fan.”

“‘The old days’?”

“You know. Before all this.” The dark eyes were locked on hers. “Thanks for riding to my rescue, Melinda May.”

***

The coffee tin was empty, except for a slip of paper at the bottom. The slip bore the legend “MY OFFICE, NOW”, written in familiar handwriting. May stood with the slip in her hand for a moment; then replaced it.

Coulson’s welcoming smile as May walked through his door turned off instantly when he saw her face.

“How did you know where they were?” she said.

Coulson sighed. “You don’t drink coffee. Addicts get sloppy – even you.”

“I need those pills.”

“Then why did it take you so long to find my message? I know how hard you worked to get clean, May. Don’t throw all that away.”

May’s shoulders sagged. “Then fix me a drink.”

“Water?”

“Whisky. The Talisker, in the next-to-bottom drawer of the filing cabinet. I’m not the only one who can be sloppy.”

“What brought this on?” Coulson asked, as he fished out the tumblers. “You haven’t relapsed in years. Was this about Guthrie?”

“You heard?”

“He’s been noisy.”

“Prick perp-sweated our suspect without my say-so. Then he had the gall to say I’d done the same to Ian Quinn.”

“You crossed a line with Quinn; no doubt about that. What Quinn said about the death of that Maltese girl didn’t excuse your getting physical. He got bruised; you got reprimanded. Whatever Guthrie thinks, two wrongs don’t make a right. We didn’t know that Quinn would disappear.”

“Did you do that?”

Coulson spread his hands. “I always thought you did.”

May rolled her eyes. “Anyway, Guthrie wasn’t the one who rattled my cage.”

“Skye?”

May nodded. “She knew my face.”

Coulson shrugged. “People often do. The mirror should be a clue that it’s a good one.”

“You’re not listening.” May accepted a glass. “She knew my face.”

Coulson stopped short with the tumbler at his lips. “That’s… surprising.”

“It’s more than surprising. It’s impossible.” May downed a stiff double in one gulp. “I wasn’t one of those hipster wannabes Blake ropes and lands. Nobody caught me; nobody came close. When I surrendered myself, that was my decision, and on my own terms.”

Coulson’s eyes were distant. “I remember.”

“And that part of my life ended twenty years ago. If you say that name now, people think of Oklahoman racists who can’t spell. The kid knows things about me that only the Bureau knows. And still she spouts this conspiracy crap about 11/2.”

“Keep me posted.” Coulson collected the tumblers. “I’ll fight the fires with Guthrie. You good?”

“I’m good. Thank you.” May stopped at the door, her face averted. “Down the years, my… problem has been hard on you.”

“Don’t apologize; stay well.” Coulson dropped the Talisker in the drawer. “But know that, if you can’t, I’ll always be there to catch you.”

***

The alert came to May’s dedicated pager at eleven pm.

When she arrived at the downtown facility, the lights were low. A burly man on the desk, whom she did not recognize, let her in.

“I was paged that there was an issue with the inmate.”

The burly man nodded. “Follow me.”

“What’s the issue?” May asked, as he led her into the building. The corridors unspooled lazily, long and dim.

“Seizure, we think.”

“Is medical care incoming?”

“It’s on the way.”

“HQ informed?”

“I called them after I paged you.”

May frowned, as they entered a sparsely furnished, unfamiliar room. “This isn’t the way to the cell.”

The burly man turned and smiled. “True enough.”

Three figures stepped out from the shadows of the room. Two men and one woman, combat gear, solid and lean. The old arithmetic of weight and reach began to chatter inside May’s head.

There was a syringe, now, in the burly man’s hand. “This doesn’t have to hurt,” he said.

May dropped into a guard stance. “Yes. It does.”

The goons were strong, fast, and knew their trade. May was rusty, and not as young as she had been. Two minutes passed, and a lot of pain changed hands in both directions, before the whole quartet were down for keeps. May rolled, lungs burning, off the midriff of the fake receptionist.

She looked up into the barrel of a gun.

***

“Settle a bet for me, Agent May,” said Guthrie, conversationally. His gun-hand did not move. “Do you let Coulson bone you while you wear the costume, or do you make the poor bastard jerk off imagining it? My money’s on option B. I just had drinks in his office with the clueless fuck. He didn’t look like a man who was getting any.”

May said nothing.

“You two have quite the rep inside the Bureau: Philip Coulson and his house-trained mask. The heart-warming tale of one boy and the psycho he befriends. You know what they call you behind your back?” Guthrie smiled. “‘More-schach’. Another tiny, crazy bitch in heels, fucked in the head because of what happened to some girl.

“Still, I’ve got to admit,” he gestured with his free hand at the prostrate bodies, “that this impressed me. Most of you freaks who came up after 11/2 were just tribute-acts. But they always said The Cavalry was fast. Now, Ozymandias, back in the day, _he_ was so fast that he could catch a bullet.” The trigger finger tightened. “Wanna play?”

“Have you killed Skye?” said May.

“Of course not. _You_ killed Skye. That’s the whole point of this dumb-fuck plan. If it had been up to me, we would have just shot the bitch and buried her at sea. My partners thought it would be more elegant to serve up a patsy. That had the amazing results,” he gestured again, “you see around you. But we can work with this. At least I get to be the one who had to put you down before you went Spirit of ’77 on the neighbourhood. Why won’t someone switch off that damned music?”

May’s brow furrowed. “What music?”

“Can’t recce this club if I can’t hear the bad guys coming.” Guthrie’s forehead gleamed with sweat. “I’m out-numbered and out-gunned; who knows where they stashed her? The police will drop me if they find me inside their perimeter; those assholes don’t get that I’m helping them do their jo…”

Guthrie raised his gun-hand to mop his brow. May struck: a punch; another punch; a kick. Guthrie toppled, quivering, to the ground.

***

“May.” Coulson was in the doorway. “You good?”

“Always.” May kicked away Guthrie’s gun. “How long have you been there?”

“Long enough.” Coulson advanced into the chamber. “You couldn’t catch a bullet.”

“You don’t know that. You just know you’ve never seen me do it.”

“I think I’m gonna hurl.” Skye had followed Coulson into the room, and was surveying the scene. “Partly from the flirting; mostly from the fluids. Jesus – what did you do to that guy’s leg?”

“You let her out?” said May.

“Had to keep her safe.”

May nodded. “You’d guessed that Guthrie was dirty?”

“That’s why I poisoned him.”

“You don’t keep poisons in your office.”

“I keep one.”

“Where the fuck did they stash the Belyakov girl?” Guthrie, foetal, importuned the air.

“Is Agent Gross _high_?”

“Yes.” May’s eyes had not left Coulson. “On someone else’s Nostalgia. He’s living the night I stopped being a vigilante. Club Bahrain.”

“The night before we met,” said Coulson. “I’m so sorry, May. The idea was to sweat him while he tripped. But the Nostalgia didn’t seem to take…”

“You never understood it. Alcohol delays the high.”

“… so I tailed him here instead. Tried to reach you, but you weren’t picking up.”

May looked down. Guthrie had silently begun to cry. “I can see why this frame would look good on me. An unstable retired mask…”

“May…”

“… an unstable retired mask, with a history of violence, especially in cases connected to young women. What I don’t see is why Guthrie’s friends wanted Crustacean Rebellion here…”

“Squids are cephalopods,” said Skye.

“… dead in the first place.”

“There’s a surprisingly elegant solution to that,” said Coulson. “She’s right. And she can prove it.”

May stared. “How?”

Skye shrugged. “I’m smart. Worked you out, didn’t I?”

“And so modest.”

“This from the woman who literally named herself after a plot device. Seriously – was ‘Deus Ex Machina’ taken?”

May’s gaze had not wavered. “How smart is ‘smart’?”

“Very.” Skye’s dark eyes looked, for a moment, a little haunted. “Smarter than anyone, except for my half-sister. We’re not tight.”

“There’s two of you,” said May. “How reassuring.”

“Maybe more. Some men can’t keep it in their pants. Our dad couldn’t keep it in his safe. Funny story.”

“But not the time to tell it.” Coulson took out a handkerchief and used it to pick up Guthrie’s gun. “Guthrie’s down; his backers are not. We have no idea how far this goes.”

“So what’s the play?” asked May.

“The light is our defence. We lock down the scene; and then go loud. Maybe bring in Blake, when she gets back from Tulsa. We have Skye; we have forensic; we have the genuine staff of this facility…”

“Where are they?”

“Guthrie’s squad tied them up. They were probably keeping them alive until they staged your bloodbath.”

“The Nostalgia is a wrinkle.”

“I’ll think of something. No doubt I confiscated the stash from you while it was still legal, and forgot to check it in.”

“No doubt. And then?”

Coulson shrugged. “Then Skye destroys the world.”

“You’ve just told me that the defining event of both our lifetimes is a lie. Even if that’s right…”

“It’s right,” said Skye.

“… blowing the whistle on that is well above our paygrade. Why can’t you just walk away?”

“Because my colleague and best friend has spent two careers proving that a good woman who walks away always ends up walking back.”

“You smooth, smooth bastard,” said Skye. “Shipping it _so hard_.”

May sighed. “Fine.”

“You’re in?”

“I’m in.”

“Then let’s get moving.” Coulson adjusted his tie. “The world won’t end itself.”

FINIS


End file.
